And you guessed it, those holes will be listed here.
The main message of this post is this: remember the knowledge that swedes don't know that much about the rest of the world. (No population as a whole know much about the world.)
What the people of a particular country know about another is a bit like a lottery. There is of course too much information, so the media just pick out a fraction of it. And since people are social creatures, they like to talk for the sake of it, often just repeating the information others (usually their countrymen, possibly a long time ago) have communicated (very possibly something untrue) about a country, adding to the skewness.
Just a quick one before the list: swedes can't understand how americans can mix up Sweden and Switzerland. But. I'm sure most of the swedes who even know of two separate countries called Slovenia and Slovakia can't mention many differences between them.
What the majority of swedes don't know about the following countries (I claim!) - will be updated over time:
Bulgaria: That they have snow.
Chile: That the ethnic heritage of the people mainly is european.
Finland: That the country has a (first language) swedish-speaking population and that swedish also is one of two official languages of the whole country.
Greenland: That there is a population living there.
India: That it is a hindu country (and not buddhist, like Thailand).
Indonesia: That it is a muslim country.
Mongolia: That there is a population living there.
Norway: That the current (2011) prime minister's name is Jens Stoltenberg.
Russia: That the russian zone of Kaliningrad exists (around 500 kilometers just across the water from Sweden's south-eastern shore). People, including swedes, don't study the map very much.
USA: That the concept of a "country" means something else for americans (the EU is like the United States and the states is like the european nations).
The main message of this post is this: remember the knowledge that swedes don't know that much about the rest of the world. (No population as a whole know much about the world.)
What the people of a particular country know about another is a bit like a lottery. There is of course too much information, so the media just pick out a fraction of it. And since people are social creatures, they like to talk for the sake of it, often just repeating the information others (usually their countrymen, possibly a long time ago) have communicated (very possibly something untrue) about a country, adding to the skewness.
Just a quick one before the list: swedes can't understand how americans can mix up Sweden and Switzerland. But. I'm sure most of the swedes who even know of two separate countries called Slovenia and Slovakia can't mention many differences between them.
What the majority of swedes don't know about the following countries (I claim!) - will be updated over time:
Bulgaria: That they have snow.
Chile: That the ethnic heritage of the people mainly is european.
Finland: That the country has a (first language) swedish-speaking population and that swedish also is one of two official languages of the whole country.
Greenland: That there is a population living there.
India: That it is a hindu country (and not buddhist, like Thailand).
Indonesia: That it is a muslim country.
Mongolia: That there is a population living there.
Norway: That the current (2011) prime minister's name is Jens Stoltenberg.
Russia: That the russian zone of Kaliningrad exists (around 500 kilometers just across the water from Sweden's south-eastern shore). People, including swedes, don't study the map very much.
USA: That the concept of a "country" means something else for americans (the EU is like the United States and the states is like the european nations).
